Movie notes: ‘Harry Potter’ after dark

If lots of folks show up at school or for work bleary-eyed tomorrow, it’s probably because they had a late-night date with Harry.

Maybe you’ve heard: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1″ opens just after the stroke of midnight tonight at every multiplex in town, most on multiple screens. If you think the pent-up demand for the “Twilight” movies has been big, the Twi-Hards have nothing on Potterites, who will have waited an entire decade for the seven books to play out on film by the time the franchise wraps up next summer.

And the waits have gotten longer as the saga has progressed. “Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” the first part of the seventh and final book, comes almost a year and a half after the sixth installment, “Half-Blood Prince.” And it’ll only get worse, since fans will have to wait until July for “Part 2,” which finally concludes the saga. “Part 1,” then, looks like the Potter equivalent of “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Two Towers” in that it advances the story while leaving everyone hanging.

I can watch all this with objective detachment, since I’m the only one in my family who hasn’t read all the books and seen all the movies. In fact, I haven’t read or seen ANY of them. I meant to, but I fell behind early, and now it’s way too late. My crew, however, is certainly plotting “Potter” strategy this weekend.

My coworkers aren’t immune, either. One staffer — I won’t reveal her identity, but her last name rhymes with “Harry us” — has had her ticket for weeks.

Local multiplexes are trying to accommodate the expected throngs tonight. The Santikos Palladium is doing its part, listing nine showings at 12:01 a.m., with several more in that first hour and another at 3 a.m. A Santikos rep says they can keep adding screens as long as people keep showing up, and the whole multiplex could be sold out tonight.

Other venues have multiple screens earmarked for Harry, as might be expected. And lots are sold out, including five of six early showings at the Alamo Quarry and three of four at Northwoods. Nationwide, more than 2,000 showings tonight are sold out, according to Fandango.com.

Kinda what you’d expect from what has been described as the most popular franchise in movie history, which is expected to rack up$7.5 billion in ticket sales by the time the curtain comes down next year, according to a report in Bloomberg News. Now Warner Bros., the “Potter” distributor, is faced with a daunting task: What comes after Harry? Maybe more films based on DC Comics heroes.